Tag: scifi

Dragonfly: Rescue

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It had taken some time, but by now, modified versions of Maya’s hand were commonplace. When she lost her hand, almost a good decade ago, her new hand was more of an experiment than a product. She wanted something that could grasp, something that could feel. And that took trial and error. It also took money. Her payment came in the form of working on a dragonfly.

The Dragonfly Project hadn’t reached out to even the far corners of the solar system yet, so Maya was lucky and got to work in a relay floating just past Mars. Within a few years after she’d been assigned, the project sent out relays out as far as Eris. Now her relay directory had listings named after gods she most certainly never heard of.

Her hand was clamped to her work table while its inner workings were carefully placed  across the table’s surface. A spring or two had worn themselves down to useless. 

“Maybe I can get some lighter plates next holiday,” she mumbled as she screwed her pinky back into place with her good hand. The newest model weighed even less than a similar sized human hand. Maya’s, however, felt more like carrying a medicine ball at all times, one armed. 

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921: Part ???

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Edgar opened his eyes. He wanted to blink, but couldn’t. He took in the scene in front of him. He heard the sounds of a robin chirping outside, saw the sunlight filter in through the shades, and felt the smooth fabric of the couch beneath him. Likely mid morning, definitely the living room, but why he was there was coming a bit slowly. Orienting himself, the remaining furniture slid into place into his mental map, with the stove in the connected kitchen coming last. He wished he could smell. He missed smelling breakfast. Edgar tried to stand up and start his day, but found his legs unwilling to listen, so he sat there, confused.

Edgar felt a weight shift to the right of him, but found himself unable to turn his head to look. Then, a hand was placed on his shoulder. “Eddie, honey, we need to talk about something.” He recognized the voice. It was Tina, his wife. All fear melted from him, and if he could have released the tension in his shoulders, he would have.

Tina took her hand, gently placed her thumb and forefinger on his chin, and turned his neck so he was looking at her, unblinking. “Your eyes are open, so I’m going to assume you can hear me.” Tina’s makeup was slightly smudged and smeared, she clearly had been crying recently, with small streaks of her eyeliner under her eyes. She took a sip of her deep hickory-colored drink. 

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Tomorrow, Cowgirl

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Kaori focused hard on her hand. Sweat beading down her face, she put every ounce of effort into moving her little finger. The other fingers were a little easier, but moving her pinky took considerable energy. 

And then it twitched.

She exhaled.

Dr. Aman wrote something down on her clipboard and then looked up at Kaori. “That’s a good sign. You’re progressing quickly.” She moved over to the IVs and checked their levels before continuing. “It usually takes a bit longer for patients waking from cold sleep to get, well, any motor control back.”

Kaori continued focusing on her fingers, trying to move her hands into different shapes but instead only twitching the tips.

Dr. Aman continued, “If you keep progressing this quickly we should be able to start working on moving your arms by the end of the day.”

“When do you think I can leave?” Kaori asked.

“You’ve still got a few days here, maybe more.” Dr. Aman turned her hand palm up so she could look at her watch. “But, good news, you have a guest on the way.”

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Shining Chariot

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“Ugh, I brought the wrong shade, can I borrow yours?” Selene was applying her eyeliner, holding herself to the wall with her feet wedged under the stabilizing bar. Cynth angled toward her and held out their hand.

“Here babe!” Selene underhand tossed the tube of lipstick to Cynth, who had wedged themself to the opposite wall of the pod.

Cynth grabbed the stick out of the air, as it slowly glided towards them. They slowly applied the lipstick, savoring the moment and feel of the pigment brushing up against their lips. “I’m really glad you have the right shade. It’s just too far to turn back towards the ship, you know.”

Selene finished prepping and released herself from the bar and pushed herself towards Cynth, holding them tight as she got closer. “It’s okay babe! Just be more mindful in the future. I swear, you’d forget your phone if you didn’t have to swipe into the pod.” Selene looked at the console. “Oh shit! Hurry up. We’ve almost connected.”

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Dragonfly: Static

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Jenny flipped the switch to start the rotation of her dragonfly’s habitat module. The spinning allowed the structure to simulate light gravity, which, even if it was nothing compared to Earth’s, was much better than nothing. She removed her hair tie, let her hair fall to her shoulders, skipped over to the fabricator and popped out a warm meal. 

“Too tired to cook today. I’m sure you understand, Fab Fab.” She patted the fabricator right above a crudely drawn face she made on the front, above the screen. The machine did not respond.

Jenny glided across the habitat and sat herself into her chair, ready to set up a call with Sammi, her sister, still back in the states. “Did that girl change her lock yet or not?” Jenny said to herself while popping a bit of the breading into her mouth. 

After pressing the call button, Jenny sat back and waited, expecting the call to take a minute before being accepted. Instead, the call was immediately accepted, shocking Jenny forward and forcing her to drop her meaty pastry.

“Shit! Hold on a second, let me get my food.” Jenny got off her chair and crawled under her desk, quickly finding the pastry before crawling back to her chair. “Stay there, I’m almost back.”

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Dragonfly: Relay

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Edwin set the applicator back onto the magnetic strip on his belt, causing a satisfying ring in his suit. The reaction of the hull patch was still working, but he knew it should be fine from here. Soon this part of the relay will be fine to work in again without protective gear, and every little bit of room was a luxury.

He pushed away from the relay and slowly floated backwards. He floated loosely, freely, and took in the sight of the whole structure. The whole thing reminded him of a dragonfly, with solar arrays for wings, and the tail itself as the actual relay. If he needed to move the thing, the wings could open up wider into solar sails, but its orbit had been stable as long as he worked there. At this point in his orbit, the relay was angled just right to catch the light of the nearby star, the body glittering as the wings absorbed the light in full, highlighting the veins of circuitry that ran through them.

The tether caught tight, reminding Edwin to come back in. He gripped his belt and the tether started to drag him back towards the airlock. Slowly but surely moving towards the entrance of the dragonfly, he took a deep breath and smiled. A good day’s work was rough on the body, and sometimes the mind, but at the end of it he felt satisfied. Tired, but satisfied. A healthy exhaustion. Although, to be fair, he couldn’t always tell what counted as a day anymore. 

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Oscillate

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Sonia starts to collect her tools and put them back into her toolbox, a small green box with a cord attached to her belt. She leans back on the cushion that she brought down into the machine’s guts a couple months ago, giving her just the barest comforts. She tightens one more valve before putting away one of her smaller wrenches. The glowing light of the screen in the crevice of the machine asks if she wants to “Oscillate.” She nods.

The display turns a bright red and shows the words “DO NOT MOVE, OSCILLATION IN PROCESS.” Sonia closes her eyes and holds her breath as the machine starts to whirl alive. She listens to every hiss and scream of the device as it awakens, mentally marking if any need to be corrected. 

A large pendulum comes swinging down towards the crevice that Sonia is hiding in, just inches to her left. It swings right above the chalk mark that she made on the ground when she first became this ship’s mechanic. The job position opened in the first place because of a botched oscillation. She was incredibly grateful that they cleaned the place up before she joined.

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Fickle

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Fickle saw the light filtering in from the still-closed curtains of the laundry room. “Rise and Shine,” Fickle whistled to themself. The morning was Fickle’s favorite part of the day. Everything processed quicker. There were fewer dangling bits of memory to slow them down as they thought about their tasks and place in the world, but they could not bask in this feeling. They had to get to work.

Their initial protocol, as usual, was to download their tasks for the day. Of course the list was pretty standard. There were no special events coming up, so the regular cycle of tasks was given to Fickle based on the day of the week. Today, Fickle had to clean underneath the couches as well as behind the bookshelves. This was Fickle’s specialty, the reason they were designed. Their arms could unfold and extend into harder to reach locations, allowing them to clean up all the difficult spots that used to take Momma moving the furniture to clean. Much less hassle if Fickle could do it by themself.

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The Tree That Wasn’t

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“Mom! Eemah! Where’s the tree out back?” Elijah was calling from the back door of the thin two story row house. “I wanted to show Carol.”

Mom, Lexi, called back to Elijah from her study on the second floor, “Oh, uh, we cut it down a few years back. Sorry love.”

“Why’d you go and do that? I loved that tree” Elijah took a step into the house and towards the bottom of the stairs.

Lexi exited her study and walked to the top of the stairs so she didn’t have to yell anymore, “It just needed to come down honey. You know how these things are. Now, no making a fuss. You can still show Carol the neighborhood.” Lexi looked around, “Where is she?”

“Oh, I’m just in the kitchen! Don’t mind me. Grabbing a juice from the fridge.”

“Don’t let her eat any of the hamantashen, Eemah made them earlier today.”

“They for tomorrow?”

“Yeah, guests are coming over.”

Carol walked into view, holding a half eaten triangular shaped cookie. “Hi Mrs. Breitman!” She took another bite while Lexi motioned to Elijah incredulously and Elijah shrugged.

“Well, I wish you would have told me, mom. I would have liked to have said goodbye.” Elijah looked down, turned around, and walked with his fiancée to the back door.

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